Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Stella (Olympia Dukakis) and Dot (Brenda Fricker) have spent 31 years together, both women now in their 70′s are beginning to lose some of their faculties, this however does not affect the love they feel for each other. When Dot's granddaughter Molly (Kristin Booth) decides to put Dot into a nursing home, the frustrated Stella must take matters into her own hands to ensure that she and Dot can stay together.

Armed with a battered old truck and the ambition to protect their relationship by getting married in Canada, Stella and Dot embark on a journey from Maine to Nova Scotia. Along the way they pickup hitchhiker Prentice (Ryan Doucette) making his own voyage home to visit his dying mother.

Director Thom Fitzgerald brings a thoughtful and extremely timely film to the screen with this trio of unique characters. Although dealing with the very real threat of a lesbian couple being forced apart in their golden years, Thompson's clever use of humour drives the reality of the situation home.

Olympia Dukakis is wonderful as the brash Stella, with a filthy vocabulary. Despite the bravado, she is really just a sweet and tender woman trying to keep her family together. Brenda Fricker is equally outstanding as Stella's longtime partner Dot.

It's amazing to believe this wonderful, little movie was written by a man. One can only assume he is well acquainted with lesbians. Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker are lovely together. The recipe of humor and drama are perfectly cooked. This little fantasy focuses on some present issues: marriage, ageism and just who should be controlling whom, but never lectures.

Two elderly women, Stella (Dukakis) and Dot (Fricker), who have lived together for 31 years in a small cottage by the sea in Maine, are deceptively separated from each other when Dot's granddaughter Molly puts Dot in a nursing home because she feels Stella is not capable of caring for her any longer. Molly is clueless about their relationship, which is hard to swallow. Although Dot has been blind for many years, Stella handles it with aplomb. Stella is a feisty butch woman who swears like a sailor, wears a tattered cowboy hat, and drinks too much tequila. Her acerbic remarks and confrontations evoke most of the humor in this film. Dot, in contrast, is sweet, plump, speaks with an Irish accent, has soft curly white hair and comes across initially as a passive grandmotherly type. Stella cleverly steals (rescues) Dot and they set out on the lam to Nova Scotia, where they understand same-sex marriage is legal. On the way they pick up a hitchhiker, Prentice, played by handsome newcomer Ryan Doucette, to help them cross the Canadian border and not be suspect. Prentice is a young naive country male turned modern dancer who is making his way to his sick mother.

The chemistry of the actors and the clever dialogue interactions will bring viewers to laughter and tears. At one point Stella is knocking a naked man off her windshield; at another, Dot accidentally lies in a bed next to a naked man, and the ensuing scramble to escape each other results in one of the most explicit and comedic moments in the film. Strong characters (and strong expletives) and the clear struggles just to be themselves, connect to the audience with a resonance that transcends whether someone is gay, lesbian, transgendered or straight...Read more ›

I had never heard of this film before I stumbled onto it "in progress" on the LMN channel yesterday. WOW..sweet, funny, incredible performances by both actresses. Other reviewers have told you about the plot in detail so I won't go there, beside I missed the first part, but I did see most of it and loved every minute. FINALLY a filmmaker creates a REAL story about the feelings that REAL people can still have for each other, even after 30 years. My grandparents had that kind of love and no they were not lesbians. But this is not really a lesbian film. It is a film about any two people who manage to sustain their love for each other in spite of a judgmental society hostile to diversity and age. It is not really a family film because of the nudity and language but you can't find a film with better values of acceptance and respect for human dignity.

for how good this movie is. I went to see it, not expecting all that much. It was fantastic. There were times there was so much laughter in the theater that we all pretty much missed the next couple of lines. The other reviewers have pretty much given the storyline, so I won't go there again. But the cast is wonderful, the story is wonderful.....guess it's just wonderful! I was starting to wonder if it would ever be out on DVD, so I'm excited that it will be in my relatively small DVD collection. I've seen several "lesbian" movies, which always left me wanting something else in the way of a plot. This one did not. If you like a good love story, you won't be disappointed.